


A Funny Trick

by conceptstage



Series: Single Chapter Critical Role [121]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:00:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22374544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage
Summary: Beau had a babysitter as a kid, an older boy named Bren. Then, one day, he disappeared from her life.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast
Series: Single Chapter Critical Role [121]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1436668
Comments: 21
Kudos: 288





	A Funny Trick

She doesn’t really remember meeting Bren. He was just always a part of her life. She doesn’t have a single memory of a time when she didn’t know him. His mother worked on her father’s vineyard, that must have been why she was allowed to hang out with him since usually her mother wouldn’t allow her to associate with poor kids.

During the day, while their parents were working, he would come up to the house and hang out with her. He called it babysitting but Beau called it friends.

Bren frowned and just flipped to the next page in his book. “I am just your babysitter, Beauregard,” he said in his thick zemnian accent.

“But I’m not a baby and you’re not my boss, so it’s not babysitting.” She was practicing her somersaults in the grass a few feet away from him. She was getting really good at them.

“What else would you call it when someone pays an older person to watch their child while they’re away?”

“A funny trick. You got my Mommy to pay you for being friends with me, very good idea.”

He chuckled a little and rolled his eyes. “You are five, I am fourteen. We are not friends. I care for you but we cannot be friends.”

“Why?”

“Because you are five. You should make friends your own age.”

Beau pouted and crossed her arms. “But they don’t like me!” she complained. “The kids around here won’t be my friends.”

Bren sighed and shut his book, using his thumb as a bookmark. “I am sure that’s not true. Why do you think that they don’t like you?”

“They told me.”

He blinked in shock. “I… Oh. Perhaps you just misunderstood?”

“Anne said ‘You’re stupid and annoying, go away, we don’t like you’.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, that is difficult to misunderstand.”

“So, see? You have to be my friend cause you’re the only person in the world who likes me.”

He thought about it for a long moment and turned back to his book, though it didn’t seem like he was reading it. “Maybe we can be friends when you are older,  _ ja _ ?”

She frowned and started kicking at the grass, angry and sad. “Fuck you.”

Bren looked up at her sharply. “Beauregard! Where did you learn that!” She grinned and laughed and started running away from him. He tossed the book away and started to run after her but she was so fast that he couldn’t catch up. “Do not say that in front of your parents! They will kill me!”

Bren babysat her for a little while longer, until he got accepted into the fancy smancy magic academy in Rexxentrum. Beau sat down on his suitcase and pouted, her arms crossed over her chest.

“You’re not going.”

Bren sighed but there was a small, fond smile on his face as he packed up his component bag. “Beau, I will miss you too, but I have to go to school.”

“No you don’t! You don’t though. You can stay here and work for me when I take over the business. I promise I’ll be the best boss ever, you can have ice cream whenever you want.”

“I do appreciate that,  _ danke _ . But this is what I want to do with my life, Beau. This is important to me.”

“I thought I was important too! You told me I was your little sister!” She was valiantly holding in her tears but she couldn’t stop her bottom lip from wobbling.

He chuckled and turned to kneel down so that they were face to face. “You will always be my  _ kleine schwester _ ,  _ ja _ ? Always. But I have to go to school now. I will write you letters all the time.”

“But I can’t read.”

“Then maybe you should start learning.” He walked over to his bookshelf and dusted off a small novel hidden in the back. It was a short, easy story about a woman who was competing to marry a prince and was sabotaged by the prince’s mother who put a pea under a stack of mattresses. He walked it back over to her and handed it over and she squinted at it suspiciously, turning it over in her hands. “This was my favorite book when I was a few years older than you. You are not ready for it now, but you can hold onto it until you are and then you can send me a letter to tell me about it.”

She reluctantly got off of his suitcase when Bren’s father came up to take it down to the carriage waiting outside, holding the book tight against her chest. She refused to let go of Bren’s hand until she had no choice. He hugged his parent’s goodbye and wiped away his mother’s tears and turned to leave.

Her new babysitter was a mean older woman who used to babysit her mother when she was Beau’s age. She had a lot of rules, stupid rules that seemed designed to make Beau misrable. 

Young ladies must always wear dresses, never slacks, and most certainly never shorts. 

Young ladies must spend their time learning piano, or embroidery, or dancing.

Young ladies must eat with their mouth closed.

Young ladies must never have skinned knees or grass stains.

Young ladies must never call people ‘poo poo heads’.

Sometimes she hated being a young lady.

She got letters from Bren every few months. He sent them along with letters to his mother and she would bring them over to her before she started work for the day. Beau would stuff the letter into her petticoats until she could find time to hide it in her room. She couldn’t read it all yet, she understood some of the words, and she wanted to save them for the day she could read the whole thing.

Over the years, the letters got fewer and farther between. At the beginning, she got letters once a month, then they spaced out to once every three months, then twice a year, then one letter at Harvest Close. They got short too. The first letters were several pages long, full of stories from school. As she learned to read she would reread his letters every night until she knew them by heart. After a few years she had less and less to read. The last letter she got was only half a page long. It was cold and detached, wishing her a happy Harvest Close.

She knew that his mother still got letters but whenever Beau asked if one had come for her, his mother would give her a small smile and pet her hair. “I am sure he is just getting busy, little one. He will send you another letter soon.” But he never did.

She was eight when his parents died.

People said they left a fire burning in the stove when they fell asleep and suffocated in their beds.

Bren hadn’t come to the ceremony. 

She never forgot about him, her first and only real friend, her brother, but as the years passed he sort of receded to the back of her mind. She was forced to leave his letters and book behind when she got shipped off to the Cobalt Soul but at that point she had long accepted that she would never see him again.

The day she left Zadash was the anniversary of the day that he left for school. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was fate. 

She looked up when someone walked down the stairs, idly listening to Jester’s story as she spoke quickly and excitedly. Fjord was watching Jester and smiling a little as she ate but he was probably too tired to join the conversation, he’d gotten really beat up the day before.

The stairs creaked as a man with long, curly red-brown hair stepped down the stairs. He was dirty, dusted with dirt and dried blood. He was wearing a too big coat and a heavy scarf that covered the lower half of his face as he and his smaller friend made their way over to the table next to them. He didn’t look up, just watched his feet as he moved. 

He sort of reminded her of someone. Maybe if he walked with his back straight and his chin up high, maybe if he smiled kindly, maybe if he had his hair immaculately styled and cleaned… Maybe he would almost be her long-lost friend. She turned away from him and started listening to Jester once more. When Jester finished her story, Beau and Fjord started talking about their plans for the day and counting their money but paused when Jester suddenly leaned over to their table neighbors.

“Are you two staying here?”

The halfling(?) froze and her big eyes blinked under her bandages. “Don’t move. Tieflings can only see movement.”

The red haired man frowned. “I do not think that is-”

“No it’s true we have a very hard time seeing things that aren’t moving. But I can hear you. You should take a bath. They have baths here, you know.”

The man looked surprised. “I- What?”

“You wash yourself with water.”

“ _ Ja _ , I know what a bath is.”

Jester leaked even farther and started to whisper loudly. “It’s because you smell really bad! And I would hate if I smelled that bad and someone didn’t tell me.”

The man blinked at her like he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It was a very Bren-like expression that made Beau’s chest feel tight. “I- I have only just met you.” It was strange to meet someone else with that accent. The Ermendruds were the only other people with it that she’d met before now. Maybe this man was a distant relative.

“Hi, I’m Jester!” Jester said, reaching out to shake his hand. 

The man just stared at the offered hand and kept his own hands in his pockets. “C-Caleb.”

Jester shook her empty hand. “Nice to meet you, Caleb. How much silver did I get?”

Beau looked down at the three piles in front of her. “Seven.”

“Woo!”

The red haired man finally looked up at her and met her eyes. He gave her a… curious look, like he wasn’t sure what to make of her.

“And 16 copper.” The eyes didn’t leave hers, getting wider and wider as Caleb seemed to come to a realization.

He jumped to his feet and grabbed for his little friend's arm, hauling her back towards the stairs. “It was very nice to meet you all, have a good day. Jester,” he said as he disappeared up the stairs. “Beauregard.”

“Caleb?” the halfling screeched, her voice fading as she got farther away. “What’s going on, what’s wrong?”

Beau watched him leave and exchanged a glance with Fjord across from her. He frowned and crossed his arms. “That was weird.”

“Yeah,” she said. “He looked really familiar.”

“No, I meant… You never told him your name.”

Beau frowned. Then, it was like getting hit by a train.

“That son of a bitch,” she hissed, throwing herself out of her chair and marching up the stairs after them. “I’m going to kill him! Don’t you run from me, you piece of shit! You have some explaining to do!”


End file.
